U.S. captain Davis Love has faith in golf’s Trinity

Cam Cole, Vancouver Sun09.25.2012

American Ryder Cup team member Jim Furyk at Medinah Country Golf Club in Medinah, Ill., Sept. 25, 2012JIM WATSON
/ AFP/Getty Images

United States team member Jim Furyk, centre, watches a shot with team-mates Phil Mickelson, left, and Tiger Woods after the team decided to play as a group due to bad weather on the second practice day for the Ryder Cup competition at the K Club in Ireland, in 2006.JEFF HAYNES
/ AFP/Getty Images

Tiger Woods and Phil Mickelson share a joke during a preview day of the 39th Ryder Cup at Medinah Country Golf Club on Sept. 25, 2012 in Medinah, Ill.Jamie Squire
/ Getty Images

The image of Seve Ballesteros brandishing his fist after winning the 1984 Open Championship at St. Andrews had its own name in Spain: El Momento. The ...

Medinah, Ill. — It is a gross misrepresentation of the facts to suggest, as some straw-clutchers did, that Tiger Woods takes personal responsibility for the failures of the five losing U.S. Ryder Cup teams on which he has played.

What he takes is his fair share of it, and no more.

“Well, certainly I am responsible for it, because I didn’t earn the points I was put out there for,” he said.

His share, he admitted, as a guy who never sits out a game, is significant.

“I believe I was out there in five sessions each time and I didn’t go 5-0 on our side. So I am certainly part of that, and that’s part of being a team.”

Note the word “part.”

It’s true that in 15 years of trying, Woods has played on just one victorious Ryder Cup side, the one that came from nowhere at Brookline in 1999 to erase a huge European overnight lead and blaze to glory in the Sunday singles.

It’s also a fact that, since then, the Yanks have only won once, and Woods missed it while recovering from 2008 knee surgery.

But in the build-up to the 39th edition of the matches that begin Friday on Medinah’s long, rough-free No. 3 course, and while we’re naming names and assigning blame, let us not forget the other two anchors (in both senses of the word) of all those losing Ryder Cup teams: Phil Mickelson and Jim Furyk.

Tiger has had company.

Mickelson started his Ryder Cup run two years before Woods, in a losing 1995 effort at Oak Hill in Rochester, N.Y., and has played on every team since. His cumulative record: 11-17-6, including 2-5-4 in foursomes, or alternate-shot play and 5-8-2 in four-ball (best ball). For all his smiling and aw-shucks forelock tugging, he hasn’t played nicely with the other kids.

Furyk, among the most articulate, professional gentlemen out there, two-time winner of the Canadian Open, liked and respected by all, has been even worse: a cumulative 4-13-3 in the team games during his seven Ryder Cups, 8-15-4 overall. What’s up with that?

Woods’s 13-14-2 record (9-13-1 in the team games, 4-1-1 in singles), looks pretty darned respectable by comparison to the other two-thirds of the great American conundrum over the past decade and a half.

But as the Associated Press’s Doug Ferguson rightly asks: which came first, the chicken or the egg? Has the American team’s record in the Woods-Furyk-Mickelson era (2-6 for Mickelson, 2-5 for Furyk, 1-5 for Woods) caused their personal stats to be so poor? Or has their poor play caused the U.S. side to lose so often?

If it’s the latter, wouldn’t it be prudent for U.S. captain Davis Love III to consider benching one or two of them for a couple of the team sessions?

“I throw the Jim Furyk or the Phil Mickelson or Tiger Woods records of wins and losses out,” Love said, spiking that idea.

“You just ask them what do they like better, alternate-shot or best-ball, and who do you want to play with. There’s a reason these guys keep making teams. “I know I’ve messed Tiger up a couple of times, so I’m part of his problem,” he said, drawing a laugh, although Love and Woods were partners in only three Ryder Cup sessions, and won two of them.

“There’s a lot of other guys. It’s hard to match them in the beginning, hard to figure out who they should play with. Gets a little bit intimidating.”

Intimidation, egos and optics always enter into a captain’s decision. Sitting out a superstar takes guts, and guarantees some pointed questions of the bencher and the benchee.

“If you look at a lot of great players over the years, they don’t have great Ryder Cup records,” said Love. “I think if you’re even .500 in Ryder Cup, you’re pretty dang good. If you’re above .500 like Seve and Jose (Ballesteros and Olazabal), you’ve had an incredible run in Ryder Cups.”

Well, yes and no.

The man whose career Tiger has made his personal Holy Grail, Jack Nicklaus, went 17-8-3 overall in his six Ryder Cup appearances, and had a winning record in every phase, including 8-1 in alternate-shot, of all things.

Sure, some of them played in the era when it was only Great Britain & Ireland on the other side, and on some lopsided U.S. wins, before the opposition was expanded to all of Europe, but it’s not entirely apples and oranges.

It’s still about hitting fairways and making putts.

Furyk mostly gets a pass, because he is a workmanlike grinder and, frankly, draws a “Really?” when mentioned in the same breath as the other two.

“I think everyone would have probably chosen Tiger and Phil to be in all those matches, maybe not necessarily me,” he said. “Phil is my age, he was always the golden boy from junior golf and college golf on.

“So I’m proud of the consistency over the years, and yeah, considering we have played in seven and won two and lost five. I would have expected and definitely wished for a better record than that.

“If we all had a 75-per-cent winning percentage, we would be 5-2, rather than 2-5.”

Mickelson has been his kind of lightning rod — think Hal Sutton’s 2004 team at Oakland Hills, the guaranteed-to-fail pairing with Woods for the first two sessions — and often when he’s played badly in the Ryder Cup, he’s been awful.

With their talent, he and Woods have always been judged by a higher standard.

“Somebody has to play in Phil’s bubble or in Tiger’s bubble, and that’s the challenge,” Love said. “Steve Stricker has found his way into that pairing because he can handle everything that’s going on around Tiger. You have to have a special guy to be able to handle that.

“So Tiger’s pretty easy. It’s just ask him if he wants to play three or four or five matches.”

And you’re pretty sure you know what the answer will be.

But for any of the Big Three, it might not be as obvious as it used to be.

Might one of them play all five sessions? Yes. But it will depend on how they’re going, how fresh they are, how many holes their matches have gone.

“In a perfect world, I’d like to have a lot of fours and threes, and have everyone fresh,” said Love.

Either way, the Big Three need to help this U.S. team win, or they could find Chicago — even the suburbs — a tough place to hide.

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